Transsexualism, bodybuilding, anorexia: body dysmorphia’s many forms
The Red Quest | January 24, 2022 | by The Red Quest
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Thinspo and Gender Goals: Musing on two internet subcultures
[https://hormonehangover.substack.com/p/thinspo-and-gender-goals] is
about attention and the failure to create effective identity: I read
it as, when young people, specifically girls, say, “I am a man,”
they really mean, “I want to look _x_ way. And all my problems would
be solved if I looked _x_ way.” This desire will never be completed,
and reaching the “goal” will never make the desirer actually feel
whole, happy etc. The way the brain is malfunctioning in an anorexic
state can give us some help understanding the transsexuality trend,
which isn’t so different from grunge or witchcraft or other teen
girl trends. What people (and especially teen girls) say is often not
to be taken at face value; it’s part of some other ploy, usually
related to status, insecurity, etc. Girls are more susceptible to
social contagions.

With anorexia, the body dysmorphia is clear: showing how the origin of
all this stuff (Tumblr) is the same, and the memes around it, the
imagery, the feelings are all very similar. Somehow, we can’t see
the obvious when we introduce the idea of gender, maybe because after
a long period of discrimination against gays, we falsely analogize
transsexuals to gays. “I hate my body, it’s the wrong one. I’ll
never be happy until I can change it to be something else.” The
language is so similar, the thoughts, all of it is really powerful to
a small number of people. Like many things, the left might wake up 50
years from now and be like, “holy shit were we in a dream? Did we
really think this shit was healthy?” No, it isn’t, and we’ll
deny we ever thought it.

Transsexualism being like anorexia is interesting in part because it
seems to get the essential idea that _there’s no end game_. Let’s
say the teens who are “transsexual” achieve their body
“perfection” or whatever. Then…what? What’s the point? It’s
like bodybuilders
[https://theredquest.wordpress.com/2021/03/22/muscle-confessions-of-an-unlikely-bodybuilder/]
(another topic discussed around here), you get the things, and
then…you show it off, I guess? You search for adulation, or
something else? And then, once you get that, then what? Whatever
problems drive body dysmorphia are not solved by whatever body mods
people think they’re feeling. With bodybuilders, some amount of
lifting and being fit is good for you, but becoming obsessed and
overly optimizing on “being fit” has negative repercussions. Most
people want social and romantic connections: but transsexualism is
unlikely to facilitate either.

At the same time, the universities have become secular priests,
obsessed with offering a liturgy about race and gender and acceptance,
and discrimination against men, especially white men (although they
hate black guys, too
[https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2019/01/21/black_men_title_nine_and_the_disparate_impact_of_discipline_policies_110308.html],
and use the Title IX apparatus against black guys). The fight against
racism and sexism is basically won… that isn’t to say neither
exist, but they’re at most small problems and minimally affect most
people, and the insidious effects of racism can be seen in things like
underperforming, predominantly black schools. The left that claims to
be concerned about “racism” isn’t concerned enough, however, to
end teachers unions, facilitate school choice vouchers, or remove
impediments to building new housing in the tony suburbs limousine
liberals live in. When it comes to women and abortion, it’s “my
body, my choice;” when it comes to getting poor black kids out of
failing schools, it’s “your body, my choice, you’re going to
stay in your place whether you like it or not, and you’re going to
do what I tell you to do.” Mostly, though, libertarianism rules: no
one cares if you’re gay or various other things–people care if you
can solve their problems (economically, most obviously). So…what’s
next? The creation of a bunch of new categories that can be fought
for. And the attempt to tell the most susceptible in our society, aka
teen girls, that they must be transexual, of all things, if they’re
having normal adolescent identity formation issues. Many in the
university establishment lack real work to do, so they glom onto
attempting to create novel identity categories, and “work” on
expatiating the sins of their souls. Meanwhile, the student loan
totals rise, the worthless degrees conferred rise, and no one
questions the system, because everyone is too busy talking about
transsexualism. Let’s talk about the incidental ridiculous thing,
while we reach into your pocket and take the money out. Let’s not
talk about reforming the universities so that degrees mean something.

Another idea: we’re going through a massive technological shift.
This liberated women from the hearth. New options were presented.
Feminism was an outcome of that technological shift. It was an answer
to the question of, “what now?” We’re at the very early stages
of that experiment, making tons of mistakes: feminism is not the
cause, it’s the natural reaction to a huge change in technology.
Transsexualism, as it’s being pushed in schools: same thing.

Ideally, teachers, parents, etc., would act as a kind of brake on the
acting out, the pretending to be transsexual, etc. Instead, teachers
and professors have bought into this bizarre signaling game and in the
process are acting as accelerators, not brakes, and are actively
facilitating mental illness in their female students. And
unfortunately, those who have not bought into it don’t say anything
because of the online mobs.

You’d think feminists who favor the flourishing of women would be
like, “Hey, this is bad for women,” but instead they seem to have
been silenced. It’s a weird world we live in, one in which notional
feminists have decided that the fight for women is done, it’s time
to move on to fight to help…men. And no one’s supposed to say
anything about it, except Abigail Shrirer
[https://abigailshrier.substack.com/p/what-i-told-the-students-of-princeton].

What’s going on? Part of it, I think, is that people online can
build fake worlds online more easily than ever, and this includes the
“biological sex is not real” people. The online people create
their own feedback loops, disconnected from the everyday reality most
people live in. One sees this with some feminists, some “red pill”
guys, with “incels,” with some kinds of terrorists of the Islamic
or American right wing variety, and with others, probably who I
don’t know of because I only notice them when they’re big enough
to hit what’s left of the mainstream. There exists a weird
combination of people with mental problems connecting online to
reinforce their mental problems, and university professors who don’t
have real work to do and need to come up with something to justify
their existence…so they’ve come up with ever-more-esoteric
definitions of sex, gender, race, etc. They pitch this to undergrads,
most of whom aren’t stupid or ill enough to bite, but some of whom
are, and those who are become the next generation of activists,
teachers, and bureaucratic school administrators.

Whoever sets the agenda wins the argument. That I have written this at
all, means that the transsexualism lunatics have won. Until the
parents get angry enough, they’ll continue to win. No one cares
about subject-matter mastery in schools any more, and they’ve given
up attempting to teach basic skills, in favor of this style of
indoctrination. To me this seems bad… but I’m one guy.

I don’t know how to fix this dynamic apart from pointing out that
most people are normal, most women like being feminine and receiving
male attention, and most parents are going to be very unhappy about
this transsexualism brainwashing. I support charter schools and
charter schools would be a step in the right direction, because “not
encouraging mental illness in students” would be a good founding
principle and step in the right direction. But school unions will
likely keep working to prevent charter schools from spreading. Some
problems don’t have solutions, the weirdos obsessed with
transsexualism make it their top issue, it’s not even my 10th most
important issue.

Not all problems have solutions, the only thing a normal person can do
is oppose the freakish gender + sex denialism in universities, and
encourage… normalcy. Today, tacking “normal” is among the most
radical acts a person can do in many cities or states. Normal is not
good in all areas but it is good in some.

A surprisingly large number of teachers read Red Quest, and they
report what’s happening in schools. Transsexualism is a social
trend, not a real one (if that distinction remains). If you’re not a
conventionally pretty girl, you’re going to get far less attention
on social media (guys are most interested in the pretty girls, and the
pretty girls are most interested, still, in masculine men: you cannot
fool the genes). Women will follow what’s socially acceptable; the
interesting question is what made this socially acceptable or
desirable in the first place.

These girls who say they are really “men” often date more pretty
girls, but they lose the pretty girls to the prototypical chad who
comes along. We’ve swung so far privileging the weird, gay,
transsexual, etc., that we’re going to see the pendulum swing the
other way. Pretending doesn’t lead to long-term relationships or
satisfaction. Being normal is going to come back. Treating unhappy
girls with hormones and surgery is crazy, and stories about how crazy
it is are coming out and are spreading.

Teens are perhaps more obsessed with attention than others, and
that’s driven by social media, and I’m not sure where that’s
finally going. There’s a move towards androgyny, but it’s not
attractive, and the lack of dimorphic sexual attractiveness is going
to reverse. Teachers are annoyed by this shit, but many are
indoctrinated. No one stands up to the herd, except maybe male PE
teachers and a lot of male math teachers. We’re being gaslit. We can
do better.

There is a syndrome that makes people think their limbs are not really
their limbs and that the limbs ought to be amputated. It turns out
that it’s possible to use transcranial magnetic stimulation to fix
or reduce that problem. We are going to look back at this era and
think, “god, what a weird time that was!” We’ll be on to another
social disease problem, then.

Meanwhile we see the rise in obesity, which is inevitably described as
“stunning.”
[https://medicineonthemove.org/obesity/obesity-rates-over-time-america/]
Somehow we are obsessed with transsexualism, when maybe we should be
obsessed with heavily processed foods and liquid sugar consumption, if
we’re going to talk about body issues. That’s not where the elite
consensus has coalesced, sadly. That article claims 18.5% of youth
under age 18 are obese. Like the original article comparing
transsexuals to anorexics says, “The pro-ana ideal is a beautiful,
waifish female figure, the Tumblr trans community often idolizes
beautiful, waifish men.” So… they want to be thin… they never
imagine themselves as fat. The big story of today isn’t
transsexualism, not by the numbers, and yet our collective response
is, “Whatever.” The most serious bodily problem facing Americans
isn’t the transsexualism that affects well under 1% of the
population.

Around here we try to talk about what’s important
[https://theredquest.wordpress.com/2017/06/15/zero-sugar-will-change-your-body-and-life/],
but in this post I’ve mostly failed. I’m reflecting the failure in
the media class more generally to talk about what matters, instead of
what doesn’t, or shouldn’t. Sad. The goal is to live a great life.
Leaning into mental illness in order to virtue signal isn’t how to
do it.

 
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Archived from https://theredarchive.com/blog/The-Red-Quest/transsexualism-bodybuilding-anorexia-body.44693